


The Most Magical Place on Earth™

by rythyme (pugglemuggle)



Category: Sidekick Squad - C. B. Lee
Genre: Abby still has her powers, Amusement Parks, Dates, Disney World & Disneyland, F/F, Fluff, Post-Apocalypse, Roller Coasters, Takes place at some ambiguous point in the future, dumb girls being dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22583446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pugglemuggle/pseuds/rythyme
Summary: Jess spins around, locating the remnants of a sign hanging behind them. "ISNE L ND," the surviving letters read."Are we…" Jess's eyes widen. "Is this—""Welcome to Disneyland!" Abby shouts, like she just can't hold the secret in any longer. She gestures around them, her arms stretched wide. “The most magical place on earth! Or, you know. What's left of it, anyway."(Or, Abby takes Jess on a secret date to the ruins of Disneyland. Fluff and shenanigans ensue.)
Relationships: Abby Jones/Jess Tran
Comments: 16
Kudos: 18





	The Most Magical Place on Earth™

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you C. B. Lee for writing the wonderful series that inspired this story! It's amazing to have representation like the Sidekick Squad on bookshelves at my local library. Makes me really happy :')
> 
> Written for day 5 of my personal fic challenge: "Fourteen First Dates: The February Fourteen Fandom Challenge."
> 
> (Unbetaed. All mistakes are my own.)

“C’mon, Abby, are we there yet?” Jess asks, crossing her arms in the passenger seat of Abby’s new car. They’ve been traveling for a few hours now, even with the modifications Abby made to the car to jack up the speed. Judging by the road signs she saw earlier, Jess is pretty sure they’re headed towards Nuevo Las Angeles, but she can’t be totally certain—Abby put a blindfold on her a half an hour ago. 

“Patience, young grasshopper,” Abby says. Jess frowns. Abby must notice, because she quickly adds, “We’re ten minutes away. We’ll be there soon.”

Great. Ten more minutes of staring at nothing. Jess sighs. “You know I trust you, Abby,” she says. “I just... I don’t like not knowing where I’m going.”

“I know. You’re not used to that. I get it,” Abby replies. She feels Abby’s hand gently squeeze her shoulder. “But it’ll all be worth it—I promise. This is going to be the best date ever. It’s got to be a surprise.”

The excitement in Abby’s voice is a little infectious. She feels her lips quirking up a little despite herself. If Abby says this is going to be worth it, Jess knows she’ll make good on her promise. She always does.

“Okay,” Jess relents. “Okay. Best date ever: here we come.”

“Heck yeah,” says Abby, making the car zoom a little faster. Jess leans back in her seat and waits.

—

"What... What is this place?" Jess asks, blinking at her surroundings. They're in the middle of a crumbling brick plaza, the brickwork covered with dead grass and dirt. Scattered around the plaza are raised platforms that might have been carefully maintained planters at one point in time, but which are now entirely overgrown with the same kind of grass and shrubs that dominate the surrounding scrublands. Here and there she sees the remnants of the flowers that must have grown here once: a little bush of white blossoms here, a lone tulip there. A few of the trees that line the plaza are still alive, but others are nothing more than skeletons hanging overhead with brittle branches and sand-colored bark.

Beyond the plaza, Jess can make out large oddly shaped structures towering high above the brick pathways. One looks like a small mountain; another looks like a strange white pyramid. Directly in front of them stands a large, dilapidated building with broken windows and tall spires with faded paint. It looks... It looks almost like...

"Is that Sleeping Beauty's castle?" Jess asks. "Like from that animated contraband movie?"

Abby smiles gleefully. "Yep!"

The wheels begin to turn. Jess spins around, locating the remnants of a sign hanging between two pillars behind them. "ISNE L ND," the surviving letters read.

"Are we..." Jess's eyes widen. "Is this—"

"Welcome to Disneyland!" Abby shouts, like she just can't hold the secret in any longer. She gestures around them, her arms stretched wide. “The most magical place on earth! Or, you know. What's left of it, anyway."

Abby takes Jess's hand and leads her further into the park. 

"This is technically still in a radiation zone, but the last time my mom was around here, she checked it out and it turns out it's safe," Abby explains. "It's been abandoned for like, at least a hundred years. None of the rides work anymore, but..." She winks. "I think I might be able to do something about that."

Jess laughs. "Seriously? These things look so rusty I'm surprised they're still standing."

Abby shrugs with a grin. "We'll see."

Abby leads her through the winding pathways, past a set of rusted train tracks, past a ring of huge colorful teacups reclaimed by shrubs and bird nests, past a huge artificial lake surrounding an island of overgrown wooden structures. When they walk by the water's edge, Jess thinks she spots the mast of a ship sticking up out of the water, but it might have just been a tree branch.

They pass by a series of abandoned storefronts as well, displaying mostly empty shelves through their cracked windows. Jess and Abby decide to check out the inside of one of them—a little white shop with chipping paint and a door that sags on its hinges. Inside there are empty racks and which probably used to have T-shirts and hoodies and other clothing items, but are now completely bare, save for a stray hanger or two. Near the back of the store, however, Abby discovers a storage closet. 

“Look,” she says, pulling out a weird plastic headband with mouse ears on the top. “It’s the Disneyland Hat.”

“Do we have to wear these...?” Jess asks, but she already kind of knows the answer. A few minutes later, they emerge back onto Disneyland’s central promenade wearing matching Mickey Mouse ears.

After a little more exploring, they finally arrive at the foot of a huge artificial mountain: The Matterhorn, as Abby calls it. Despite the disrepair of most of the surrounding areas, the Matterhorn appears relatively intact. Must be all the plastic they used to make it. Jess can’t even begin to imagine using that much fossil fuel just to build a fake mountain.

“There’s a rollercoaster in there, you know,” Abby says with a grin. “Well, two, actually. One of them is pretty broken right now, but the other one...” She pauses, her nose scrunching adorably as she concentrates. “I think enough of it is working that I could probably fix that one up.”

Jess looks up at the sheer cliffside of the artificial mountain. “Are you sure...?” 

“Yes,” Abby says. “Pretty sure. Well, mostly sure. We can see when we get up there.”

Jess gulps. She trusts her girlfriend—she really does—but the prospect of using Abby’s superpowers to ride a hundred year old rollercoaster is making her head spin. Abby’s lack of certainty isn’t doing much to calm her nerves, either.

They climb a long stairway up the side of the mountain before weaving back and forth through row after row of queue space. It’s hard to imagine this place being busy enough to have this long of a line, but then again, there were a lot more people in the world before the wars.

Finally, they reach the front of the line. In front of them is a set of steel rails at the bottom of a tunnel disappearing into the mountain. It’s too dark in the tunnel to see anything. 

“Abby...are you sure this is a good idea?” Jess hedges. “Are you sure you know how roller coasters work? I mean, it’s not like there are any working ones today to base it off of...”

“They’re really not that hard,” Abby says dismissively. “They’ve had them since the 1800’s. Simple mechanical things, really.” She closes her eyes for a moment, and then a rickety bobsled-shaped car appears from the tunnel behind them, creeping slowly across the tracks. “See?” she says, getting into the car. “Easy.”

“If you say so,” Jess says. She takes a deep breath and then sits behind Abby in the tiny car.

Abby turns around in the car and gives Jess a wide grin. Her eyes are filled with an infectious glee that’s hard not to catch. “You ready?” she asks.

“As I’ll ever be,” Jess replies.

“Okay. Hold on tight. Keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times, blah blah blah... Just making sure...we’re all...set... Okay!” An old metal bar comes down to fix sturdily over her lap. “Here we go.”

And then, with the sound of creaking metal, the car begins to move into the dark tunnel.

The track goes uphill at first. As the light behind them gets further and further away, Jess becomes hyperaware of the echoing sound the wind makes as it rushes through the tunnel and the way her heartbeat is pounding in her ears. The metallic click of the chain pulling them up the hill gets louder as well, the steel beams groaning under weight they haven’t felt in more than a hundred years.

As they begin to reach the top, a few lights flicker on, and the car turns a corner. The artificial walls look to be covered in ice, glistening in the yellow-orange lights. Fake crystals glimmer hazily to their right, several decades of dust dulling their glow. 

“This isn’t too bad,” she says to Abby. “I thought roller coasters would be scarier, since people in contraband movies always seem to be afraid of them, but this is—”

And then the track begins to tilt downward. The car speeds up. Jess forgets whatever she was saying and holds onto the sides of the car for dear life.

The car hurtles down the tracks, twisting and turning through the mountain, weaving in and out of patches of natural light and pitch blackness. A sound bubbles up in Jess’s throat that she thinks is a scream until it comes out sounding more like laughter. She feels the wind in her hair as they speed around another bend, the cart jerking as the rails straighten out again before plunging briefly in an unexpected dip. Jess shrieks and decides, right then and there, that roller coasters are her new favorite thing.

And then the track actually disappears.

They’re coming up on another bend where the rocks overhead give way to the bright California sky, letting the sun illuminate the track ahead of them. She sees them extend down and around the mountain again, except for a solid five or six feet where there just...aren’t any rails. “Abby?” Jess says, her voice pitching up as panic begins to flood in. The missing track is twenty feet away, fifteen feet away, ten feet. “Abby, I think—:”

“Got it,” Abby says. She puts her hands on either side of the car. For a moment, Jess feels weightless. She sees the car lift as it continues its forward momentum along the direction of the rails, but now it’s going up, as well, up like airplanes in old movies taking flight—

And then the car lands back on the rails at the other side of the gap with a  _ thunk _ . The car turns a corner again and begins to slow before they arrive once again at the front of the queue.

Jess lets out a slow, slow breath.

“Well,” Abby says, “that was a little unexpected.” 

There’s a few seconds of silence. Then they both burst into giggles.

“Oh my— That was—” Jess tries to catch her breath. “That was really, really scary, but—”

“But I kind of want to do it again.”

“Yes!” Jess agrees. “Yes! But in, like, thirty minutes. At least. I still definitely need a break after that last part.”

“Yeah, me too.” Abby hops out of the car, then reaches out a hand to help Jess out as well. “Lifting an entire roller coaster car at the last minute like that is a little tough, even for me. But...” She grins. “I have a picnic packed in the car if you’re ready for a lunch break.

“A picnic?” Jess takes Abby’s hand and lets herself be pulled onto solid ground. “What kind of food did you pack?”

“Only the best,” Abby says cryptically. At Jess’s pout, however, she seems to give up on keeping another secret. “Okay, fine. I packed  _ banh mi _ .”

“You packed— Abby!” Jess throws her arms around Abby’s shoulders and pulls her in for a kiss. Then she hugs Abby a little tighter than she probably should. “This really is the best date ever.”

“Well, you’re the best girlfriend ever, so you deserve it.”

“No,  _ you’re _ the best girlfriend ever.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“Whatever. Let’s go eat.” Jess tugs at Abby’s hand. “I didn’t realize it until you started mentioning food, but I’m actually starving.”

“Okay, okay,” Abby laughs. “Let’s go.

They walk back through the abandoned theme park hand in hand. The best date ever has only just begun; later they’ll try a couple more roller coasters, wander through the remnants of a haunted mansion, and uncover a secret stash of Star Wars merchandise to bring back to the Resistance. Underneath the dirt and weeds and disrepair, there’s still fun to be had here, still magic to be found. This was once the most magical place on earth—or so she’s been told.

Then again, Jess thinks, maybe an old defunct megacorporation doesn’t deserve credit for the magic they found today. Disneyland is just a place. Abby’s the one who made all of this happen, after all. Jess squeezes her hand a little tighter. 

Abby really is the best girlfriend she could ask for. 

She’s so, so glad she took that internship.

**Author's Note:**

> "The most magical place on Earth" is the tagline for Disneyland in this universe. Before publishing this fic, the author totally knew that in our universe, it's "The happiest place on Earth". :))))
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3


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